Haven [Marvel | Bucky Barnes]

Chapter 13

He hadn't come back.

For the first time since the night of the drive-by Iris was left to fall asleep in her own bed—alone—rather than nestled against James on the couch. She missed it. She missed him. It had only been a matter of weeks but already she'd grown so used to him holding her as she fell asleep. And because of it, tonight sleep just would not come.

Well, that wasn't the only reason, but it certainly didn't help.

So she lay awake, staring at the shadows shifting across the ceiling or at the dim wash of light seeping through the semi-sheer curtains that kept the harshness of the streetlamps out of her room. Exhaustion pulled at her, emotional and otherwise, but the turmoil of her thoughts kept her mind wide-awake. Her head was far too jumbled and scattered to calm enough to let her sleep. It was too full of James.

He cared about her enough to try and scare her away no matter how much the effort had ripped at him. She'd seen the agony in his eyes as he tried to frighten or horrify her into giving up on him both with words and with actions. But she wouldn't be so easily persuaded. Didn't he understand she was willing to fight for him? That she wanted to help him pick up the pieces of his shattered life?

That she'd be willing to follow him?

No, she realized as she lay in the empty, lonely darkness of her bedroom. No, he wouldn't. He couldn't understand that she could possibly see what she saw in him. He genuinely believed he was a monster, that he wasn't worth her kindness or her understanding.

Or her love.

It still baffled her to even consider that phrase as she rolled it over and over again in her head. But it was weirdly and simply true. She'd fallen in love with James Barnes. She'd fallen in love with a man whose past was a patchwork of memories he grasped to hold onto and others he desperately wished he didn't have. A man who had killed, who'd assassinated; yes, she could read between the lines. He'd been some sort of mercenary soldier. He'd been tortured and brainwashed until he hadn't known who he was anymore.

He didn't know just how much she knew, or just how many of the pieces she'd put together. But she was not an idiot and she while she wasn't dogged in her attention to the news, she had been just as transfixed by the sensational stories that had gripped the news cycle in the days surrounding the collapse of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the chaos that had gripped DC when the Helicarriers had fallen from the sky.

It had taken time and seeing the footage again on the TVs at work, but she had finally figured it out a week or so ago. It was hard not to when they replayed footage caught on traffic cams of a stunning fight between Captain America and a mysterious masked man with a mirror-bright metal arm every few weeks. It was an arm she'd touched. An arm that had saved her life. An arm that belonged to the man she'd grown to care for far quicker than she'd ever believed possible.

She'd fallen in love with the Winter Soldier.

Did that make her a horrible person? Anyone else would have long reported him to the police at least. As the leaked S.H.I.E.L.D. files circulated and were painstakingly dissected, sparse smatterings of information had come to light about him. He was 'the Asset'; an infamous HYDRA assassin. The best operative they had. A legend, even. His identity hadn't been definitively leaked—Iris had yet to hear any newscasters or reporters call him by anything other than the Winter Soldier—and neither had she seen any images of his face released. But the last few weeks especially had seen a great deal of speculation on who he was, what he was responsible for and where he was now. It was the interest stirred up by the new details that led to the footage reemerging that had her finally making the connection.

And they were speculating that he'd done some pretty horrible things...monstrous things. Eyewitness accounts suggested that he'd opened fire on a crowded street at one point in an attempt to kill Captain America. Others said he was responsible for assassinating a high-level government agent mere days before the Helicarrier thing. How could she possibly love a man responsible for such awful things? How could she not want to report him immediately?